Family First gets $405,000 lifeline from its chairman

Ruth Williams and Mark Hawthorne

THE embattled Family First Party has been thrown a financial lifeline by its chairman Bob Day, who has propped up the once-influential organisation with loans and campaign funding of more than $400,000.

The party's latest donation documents show that the South Australian businessman made two loans totalling $405,000 to the party's federal and South Australian branches last financial year. Mr Day told The Sunday Age he had also contributed funds to his own tilt at a Senate seat in the August federal election.

Mr Day's loans made up most of the 2009-10 income generated by the party's federal branch, which pulled in more than $1 million in annual donations in the mid-2000s. Family First is now run out of the Adelaide offices of Mr Day's residential development company Homestead Homes.

Although the party has two South Australian MPs, its national presence will be reduced when Victorian senator Steve Fielding's term expires on June 30.

But despite his considerable contribution, Mr Day said Family First was not dependent on his wealth. ''Not at all, there have been some very strong supporters who have [made] loans to the party for many years,'' he said. ''All I have done is replace some of the good grace of some of the other supporters of the party, who have provided substantial loans.''

The donations meant the party was cashed up for the federal election, in which Senator Fielding failed to hold his seat and Mr Day narrowly missed out on becoming a senator. But its performance - in which it gained 4 per cent of the vote in several lower house seats and in the South Australian Senate race - was enough to secure it about $400,000 in Commonwealth election funding, Mr Day said.

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According to its disclosures to the Australian Electoral Commission, the party's national secretariat owed more than $280,000 at June 30 last year, but Mr Day said the party had paid down some of its debt with the election funding. ''The party is not dependent on me,'' he said.

One of the debts repaid was a long-standing $13,500 loan from Hardel, a company owned by Family First's original bankroller, property developer Peter Harris.

It has emerged that Mr Harris, who was the chairman and major financial backer of the party during the mid-2000s, was declared bankrupt last month at the petition of a former close friend and Family First donor, David Burrell, who successfully sued Mr Harris for $2 million last year.

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Mr Harris donated tens of thousands of dollars to Family First in the mid-2000s. But his property development company Hardel went into administration then liquidation in 2009, followed by two other Hardel group companies last year.

Family First appears to have severed all connection with its former leader. Hardel's liquidator Robert Ritchie, from O'Brien Palmer, said the party had paid the $13,500 debt it owed to Hardel, and he said he had been unable to find evidence to support Mr Harris's claim that the party owed Hardel as much as $153,000.

Mr Day said Mr Harris ''only ever had'' a small loan to the party. The Sunday Age was unable to contact Mr Harris.